


The Alternate Life and Times of Peter Pettigrew

by Beruthiel



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: AU, Angst, Deathfic, Gen, The Prank, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 05:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6942328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beruthiel/pseuds/Beruthiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius's prank gets Snape killed.  Things do not improve from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Alternate Life and Times of Peter Pettigrew

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2007 for an AU challenge on Livejournal.

My name is Peter Pettigrew. I’m going to die soon.

I don’t know how they’ll do it, but I’ll starve to death on my own if they don’t hurry up.

I found parchment and ink on the dead man next to me. There’s just enough light coming from under the door to write by, so I might as well keep busy. I have no profound statements to make. Guess I’ll write about me.

 

When I was little I expected my life to amount to bugger all; everything always did. I don’t think I imagined it being quite this bad, though.

Before Hogwarts I had no friends. I was short, clumsy, not too bright and hopelessly untalented. Dumb little Peter, practically a Squib. Even my mum was embarrassed for me. Those days seem like paradise now.

Things sure changed at school. Suddenly I was somebody. No one bullied me. Teachers took me seriously (well, some of them). I didn’t dread getting up in the morning. All because I shared a room with Sirius, James and Remus.

My only friends. I never knew exactly how I became one of them, and hardly cared. I was finally respected; nothing else mattered. Should’ve known it couldn’t last.

Remus was a werewolf. We found out in second year. James and Sirius were terribly excited. I wasn’t so keen on it, but if they could accept dumb little Peter I could overlook lycanthropy.

At school Remus spent full moons in a shack in Hogsmeade, and James decided the three of us should study Animagism so we could join him. Took a bloody long time. My Animagus form turned out to be a sodding _rat_. Got teased for that, let me tell you. We had great times, and life would have been grand if Sirius hadn’t buggered it all up.

There was this guy at school, Snape. He was a loser, the sort of reject I would’ve been without my friends. We ~~fought with~~ were arseholes 

 

. . . I thought I heard something just now, but there’s nothing. Maybe I’m going mad.

 

One full moon in 1976 Sirius let Snape hear about Remus's shack. Snape went out there. The next morning a teacher found Remus and . . . what was left of Snape.

I saw Remus when they brought him back to the castle. He was paler than a ghost and covered in blood. And he couldn’t stop crying. All he could say was, “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry,” over and over.

James worked out what happened and got Sirius to confess. He was always reckless, but I don’t know what the hell he was thinking that night. Perhaps

 

I need to stop. I’m starting to cry again.

 

It’s later. They still haven’t come for me. Don’t know why I’m bothering to write all this, but it’s better than gibbering in a corner, I guess.

 

After Snape died my life went to shit. The Ministry found out about our little full moon expeditions. They sacked Dumbledore and expelled James and me for _"endangering the students and the community.”_ We were lucky not be arrested for illegal Animagism. Sirius was sent to Azkaban for life and Remus got the chop. It wasn’t his fault, but the law says that any werewolf who kills someone must be destroyed. Like an animal.

I lost touch with James and just bummed around for a few years. Dumb Little Peter again. Had to mooch off relatives; couldn’t get a job without NEWTs. Nothing important happened to me till I met James in a pub, in ’79.

After getting expelled, James joined Dumbledore’s secret army against You-Know-Who. So like him, thinking he could save the world. Lily, the girl of his dreams, joined up too. He tried to get a date with her (again), but she wouldn’t give him the time of day. Seems she thinks we all killed Snape on purpose, and she wanted nothing to do with a murderer. Broke poor James’s heart.

Lily was going to marry another of Dumbledore’s people, Sturgis Podmore, and James was drowning his sorrows in that pub when I ran into him. Then he told me the war was hopeless, the Death Eaters were winning, and Dumbledore was missing.

The next night You-Know-Who took Hogwarts. James and Podmore died trying to defend it. Then the _Daily Prophet_ shut down, so that’s all I could find out.

I met Lily the week before she was taken. She didn’t seem to care about talking to murderers anymore. She said the Death Eaters had taken all the Hogwarts kids as prisoners, and Dumbledore was dead. He lost a lot of support after being sacked, so people stopped thinking he was the hero of the age, and finally someone found the guts to off him. Along with his army.

Lily vanished, and the Dark Mark appeared over her flat.

I don’t need to say any more, do I? You-Know-Who took the Ministry, and the rest is history. I survived since then by hiding in rat form.

 

A while ago I saw a Death Eater torturing some Muggles. I tried to stop him, but he had friends nearby. They caught me, and I woke up in this room with a dead guy for company. I don’t know how long I’ve been here.

I’m not going to fight when they come. I’m sick of trying to live in this world, with Him in charge. I just want to die and get it over with. But I won’t snivel either. I don’t want to be Dumb Little Peter anymore.

If anyone ever reads this, I hope your life was better spent than mine.

 

I hear footsteps. They’re coming.


End file.
